‘Yahoo’ went Shammi Kapoor as a nation of stuffed shirts and repressed prudes flung off their invisible chastity belts and visible moral fungi to swing to the new Yahoo Hero’s zing-thing. Though Kapoor had done the Yahoo role earlier, no film epitomised his free-spirited, rebellious persona as effectively as Junglee.
Belting out Mohd Rafi’s Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe and Ai-yay-ya karoon main kya suku suku (the opening portions of this number were done by composer Shankar), Shammi Kapoor rocked the nation as Shekhar, the vilaayat-returned Stuffed Shirt whose mother (Lalita Pawar) finds singing, dancing and merrymaking to be vulgar.
Junglee introduced the beauteous Ms Saira Banu to the Hindi cinema with a fanfare that was hitherto unknown. Pre-empting Hema Malini’s launch 8 years later as the “Dream Girl”, Saira Banu as the “Beauty Queen” had the nation swooning in delighted anticipation. She was the second heroine after Asha Parekh in Dil Deke Dekho, whom Yahoo Kapoor brought screamingly to the screen. A third—Sharmila Tagore in Kashmir Ki Kali—soon followed.
Saira Banu still recalls the rows after rows of people lined up on both sides of the road as she drove to the premiere of Junglee in Delhi. Fetchingly photographed by N.V.Srinivas in Eastmancolour among the multi-coloured flowers of Kashmir, Saira trilled Lata Mangeshkar’s Kashmir ki kali hoon main mujhse na rootho babuji. And thousands of flowers bloomed in the hearts of Indian moviegoers.
In spite of Saira’s glamour and beauty, Junglee was Shammi Kapoor’s show all the way. He was killingly comic as the killjoy who loosens up when love is in the air. The film ushered in an era of Eastmancolor photography as the accepted code of visualisation for mainstream Hindi cinema. Before Junglee only some important commercial films like Mehboob Khan’s Aan were given the privilege of colour photography. After Junglee, Eastmancolour came to be associated with family musicals.
Shankar-Jaikishan’s long and fruitful association with the cinema of Shammi Kapoor started with Junglee. The songs, from the coltish duet Mere yaar shabba khair to the dirgeful imperishable Ghazal Ehsaan tera hoga mujhpar, filled the screen with a sense of joie de vivre.
Producer-director Subodh Mukherjee’s earlier films like Paying Guest (1957) and Munimji (1955) harped on the theme of masquerade. Junglee extended that theme by making the protagonist indulge in a psychological masquerade whereby he remains a stranger to his own desires and pleasures until he meets the girl.
Remarkable for its use of music, colour, glamour, machismo and beauty Junglee was released during the same year that Nasir Husain foisted a similar-mooded musical romance Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai on the audience. The swinging 1960s had arrived.
